Let’s remember when a school bus plunged into Lake Chelan, on this day in 1945 (November 26)
Today in things that have given me nightmares because they’ve really happened…
From HistoryLink and Daryl C. McClary:
On November 26, 1945, the driver of a Lake Chelan School District bus carrying 20 young students and a woman, skids off South Lakeshore Road during a snow storm and plunges down a 30-foot embankment into Lake Chelan. The woman and five children manage to escape thorough broken windows and reach the shore, but the driver and 15 students drown in the icy waters. Two bodies are recovered soon after the accident, but the bus and remaining 14 victims disappear. After searching for a week, Navy divers finally find the bus sitting precariously on a ledge in more than 200 feet of water. The bus is carefully hoisted to the surface, but it contains the bodies of only four students and the driver. Lake Chelan has a reputation of never yielding its dead and the bodies of the missing nine victims will never be recovered. It is the worst school-related accident in Washington state history.
…
On Monday morning, November 26, 1945, Royal J. “Jack” Randle (1921–1945), a Lake Chelan School District bus driver, was proceeding on his normal route along the west side of the lake, from 25-Mile Creek to Chelan, picking up school children. Mrs. Glenna Brown caught a ride on the bus, hoping to keep a dental appointment in Chelan. It had started snowing, but there was only a light accumulation on the unpaved road, so he didn’t bother putting on tire chains. But the snowstorm intensified, limiting his vision. Randle, a World War II veteran, had spent 26 months on Attu in the Aleutian Islands as an Army truck driver, so he wasn’t intimidated by severe winter weather.
According to surviving witnesses, approximately nine miles from Chelan (now Lake Chelan State Park), a heavy accumulation of snow on the windshield stopped the wipers from working. Unable to see, Randle pulled the bus off the roadway to clear the windshield; however, the bus struck an outcropping of rock, sending it diagonally across the road, over a 50-degree, 30-foot embankment. The bus rolled over twice and came to rest right side up on a large boulder, with the front-end five feet under water. Randle, injured and trapped behind the steering wheel, ordered everyone to get out. There was mass confusion as the students frantically looked for ways to escape. Mari Condon, a student, managed to kick out a window near the back, but as she and others left the bus, it became over-balanced and slid off the rock. Only six passengers managed to escape before the bus disappeared into the lake. The survivors were Mrs. Glenna Brown, age 37; Donald Mack, age 13; Ethel Keck, age 9; Robert Watson, age 8; Peggy Rice, age 16, and Mari Condon, age 17.
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